The government refused to disclose the findings but acknowledged in a response, that they have conducted analysis of the impacts of Brexit in over 50 sectors of the economy. Since these studies came to light, she has been urged to get them released through a Freedom of Information request. That she now done.

One study undertaken by the Department of Health was leaked. This revealed that Brexit could result is a shortage of more than 40,000 nurses by 2026. To avoid prevarication on grounds of cost and other spurious reasons, she limited the request to the release of details on this one study. More information here.

The petition is already on its way to 13,000 signatures. She asks all to add their name if they haven’t done so already and to share widely through the usual channels. Dr Scott Cato ended:

“Whether you voted Leave or Remain, it is surely in the public interest that the Brexit process is as open and transparent as possible. If the government is withholding significant information about the future of our country, then it is working against the very principle of democracy”.

The Haemophilia Society has blown the whistle and called for an enquiry into its own failure and that of government, pharma and clinicians. More here.

Medics and politicians knew by the mid-1970s that commercially manufactured blood products from the USA were suspect. By the mid-1980s there were warnings of a similar situation in respect of HIV. Nevertheless these products continued to be imported and used – just as OP sheep dips were.

British haemophiliacs and other victims’ lives were blighted in the 1970s and 1980s by these cheap imported US blood products, harvested from inmates and drug addicts. More than 7,000 were infected and went on unknowingly to infect family

Last week in The Times, Margarette Driscoll recalls that in 2015, following the Penrose report into contaminated blood products in Scotland (which many victims denounced as a whitewash), David Cameron apologised to those who were infected by HIV and hepatitis C.

Weasel words

References to “compensation” have been changed to “payments” – to avoid admitting the liability which is already common knowledge? The sums received by victims of the contaminated blood scandal are known as ex gratia payments.

In April, as he left the Commons, the former health secretary Andy Burnham declared there had been a “criminal cover-up on an industrial scale in the NHS” over contaminated blood and called for a Hillsborough-style inquiry.

Diana Johnson, Labour MP for Kingston upon Hull North, has been campaigning on the issue since she met one of her constituents, a mild haemophiliac who was given factor VIII in 1983 to prevent excessive bleeding when he had a tooth removed in hospital. He discovered he was infected with hepatitis C in 1995, when it showed up on blood tests for an unrelated illness.

As Theresa May had set up the Hillsborough inquiry when she was home secretary, Johnson was hopeful she would do the same for contaminated blood.

May refused. Johnson requested an urgent Commons debate, which was due to be held on Tuesday. She then got the six leaders of the opposition parties — including the DUP — to sign a letter to Ms May asking for an inquiry, and this is to be set up.

In March this year a scheme to pay the victims of NHS blood contamination is to be scaled back under government plans announced on Monday. Ministers believe the reforms are necessary because more people are now considered likely to develop serious health issues – and be entitled to higher payouts – pushing the programme as much as £123m over budget.

The government has proposed measures that would cut predicted costs, including limiting the availability of the higher level of financial support under the scheme

The Haemophilia Society calls for an enquiry into its own failure and that of government, pharma and clinicians

Medics and politicians knew by the mid-1970s that commercially manufactured blood products from the USA were suspect. By the mid-1980s there were warnings of a similar situation in respect of HIV. Nevertheless these products continued to be imported and used.

British haemophiliacs and other victims’ lives were blighted in the 1970s and 1980s by these cheap imported US blood products, harvested from inmates and drug addicts. More than 5,000 were infected and went on to unknowingly infect family and friends.

In 2010 this site recorded the efforts of Lord Alf Morris, fighting for better treatment of patients infected with contaminated blood products for years. It was noted that eight years ago the Lancet reported the Irish parliament’s generous compensation package for haemophiliacs infected by contaminated blood products.

The British government has not treated victims well. Many of the relevant records have disappeared. Former Health Secretary Patrick Jenkin and former Health Minister David Owen both searched the departmental archives, but were told that the documents had been accidentally destroyed.

Of the 1,200 who contracted HIV, barely 200 survive. They have fought tirelessly for safe products and proper compensation for the avoidable infections which have devastated their health, turned family members into full-time carers, and left many living in poverty.

In March a statement by the Board of Trustees of the Haemophilia Society on contaminated blood opened:

Failures in government policy and negligence of public bodies led to people being infected with blood borne viruses as a result of their treatment with blood products in the 70s and 80s. The impact of these failures was worsened by poor communication from government, healthcare professionals, pharmaceuticals companies and The Haemophilia Society. Warnings were not heeded and errors were subsequently hidden.

Pharmaceutical companies and clinicians did not share, or even hid, information about risks from patients and patient groups. Blood products, for the treatment of bleeding disorders, were made from pooled human plasma which was known to allow the transfer of viruses. Blood donations, particularly in the USA, were taken from high risk paid donors, often in prisons and without adequate processes to screen potential donors.

We condemn the actions and inactions of all parties that contributed to dangerous products not being withdrawn, patients not being properly informed of risks and technological and procedural advances ignored.

The additional funding announced last year to more than double the budget for contaminated blood support has not gone to those most in need and will ultimately leave many people with less support. Other affected groups such as bereaved parents, partners and other family members have been particularly under-supported and ignored.

We do not think the current settlement is sufficient to provide the support people need and deserve. It does not allow them to have a reasonable standard of living rather than just be removed from poverty. We reject the current proposals for reform of the support arrangements in England as they do not recognise the full needs of the bleeding disorder community, were poorly conceived and consulted on, do not provide sufficient support to people covered by the scheme and still exclude some individuals entirely.

We want a full public inquiry under the inquiries act as only this could compel witnesses and would shed light on concerns such as:

* the inappropriate use of known infected treatments on previously untreated patients

* why and how British self-sufficiency in blood products was never achieved

To facilitate this we want a full and open disclosure of all information held by the Government, or elsewhere, relating to the sourcing, manufacture, procurement, licensing and NHS treatment with contaminated blood and blood products. However, an inquiry must not distract from or delay the implementation of an improved support scheme.

The general message:

“I avoid the news; I just don’t switch on.“

Anecdotal evidence from many encountered indicates a growing intolerance of TV, the Murdoch press in particular and radio, which constantly focus on the latest man-made or natural disaster and the actions of the corrupt or callous – a tiny minority.

Online headlines presented by the Murdoch Times today:

Mike Ashley (above) ‘drank 12 pints and vomited at meeting’

No 10 ‘buried terror report to protect Saudi Arabians’

Border Force makes record seizure of guns

Venus in tears as car crash casts a shadow over first-round

May’s pork barrel tactics demean our politics

City gripped by sub-prime lending fears

Pay row leaves Bank of England facing its first strike in 50 years

Rise in high-risk dependency on alcohol among those seeking help.

If you want something better go to Redbrick, and read the thoughtful offerings of students at Birmingham University: http://www.redbrick.me/commentwhich offer a more balanced view of life around them.

A revulsion from the continual diet of news focussing on the thankfully rare instances of disaster and cruelty is growing. A reaction from hardier souls is to actually read these newspapers and listen to or watch the news because ‘You’ve got to know what’s going on’ – apparently oblivious of the fact that what is presented is often far from being the truth – see our Secret State category for more on that subject – the 18thhere.

A report about the first scientific study into the effect of TV news reports confirmed the obvious: that broadcasts of reports of famine, violence, poverty and crime leave viewers considerably depressed – and happy stories of Lottery winners and “miracle” recoveries (equally rare) do not.

Psychologist, Prof Graham Davey (University of Sussex), who conducted the study with colleague, Dr Wendy Johnston (University of Edinburgh), said: “We found that negatively balanced material does change people’s moods in a negative way, and this could have other knock on effects, such as making people worry more about their own problems.”

The writer’s unscientific findings were that was that the people I met actually felt that they’d had ‘the best of it’ and were worried about the future for their children and more so for their grandchildren.

And it does this occasionally – see the link to this list above: ‘From political upheaval to natural disasters, the first three months of 2017 have seen many challenges. But behind the headlines, there are signs of progress and possibility. Here are 20 of our favourites’. So often, however, the reports come from far afield – only two items in the list from Britain – and many will not feel that they are relevant to daily life here.

Amongst the writer’s websites which cover political corruption, growing food insecurity, chemical and nuclear dangers and illegal killing by armed drones is one – Antidote to Gloom – which is more happily received.

This week random visitors from America topped the list (left) who actively sought news relating to the first link:

Times journalists Alex Ralph, and Harry Wilson present and comment on material collected by the Times Data Team: Tom Wills, Ryan Watts, Kira Schacht. Links have been added by PCU’s editor to enable readers to learn more if they wish to do so.

“FTSE 100 groups, including banks, defence contractors, tobacco manufacturers and telecoms companies, have spent more than £24 million on lobbying in Brussels and about £335,000 funding all-party parliamentary groups in Westminster”.

They add: “There is no suggestion of any wrongdoing or rule-breaking by companies”.

FTSE 100 political spending (over the last two years)

The Times first focusses on All Party Parliamentary Groups (APPGs)

APPGs are run by and for Members of the Commons and Lords who join together to pursue a particular topic or interest. Many involve individuals and organisations from outside Parliament in their administration and activities – or as the journalists put it, “help to push industry agendas in parliament”. Read more here.

Unsurprisingly, BAE Systems, which spent £37,000 on a group “to promote better understanding of the Her Majesty’s armed forces in parliament”, is among the biggest backers of the parliamentary groups.

The writers comment that parliamentary groups have proved contentious because of the large amounts spent on reports that often support the views of industry and which grant access to parliament for companies and lobbyists.

Note: ’Donations to APPGs’ shows spending between Jan 2015 and Mar 2017 as declared on the Register of APPGs. ’Spend on EU lobbying’ shows companies’ minimum estimates for the most recent financial year declared on the EU Transparency Register at the time of research. Here is a snapshot taken from one of 10 pages listing donations/other spending and the companies’ rationales for these sums being given.

The Times’ second focus is on the denial of information to shareholders

Less than £10,000 of identified political and lobbying spending in the EU was disclosed to shareholders in the companies’ recent annual reports. ompanies are not required to disclose details to shareholders and little information on corporate political and lobbying activities is revealed in annual reports, which are published before shareholder meetings. The tens of millions of euros spent each year in the EU go largely undeclared to shareholders.

Corporate Europe, which campaigns for greater transparency in EU decision making, has spent years tracking how the business world moulds policy.

Vicky Cann, the group’s UK representative, said that the banking and energy industries were the most active lobbyists. “The financial services industry is a huge spender and even then we think the real scope of their spending is probably bigger than we can currently see,” she said. Her colleague gave the example of recent emissions legislation that was the subject of intense lobbying by BP and Shell.

As Peter van Veen, director of business integrity at Transparency International, said, “Corporate transparency over political activities is important to ensure the public can have the confidence that their politicians and industry leaders are conducting business ethically . . . If companies are not voluntarily willing to disclose their political activities and funding of these, then stronger legislation should be considered and a possible starting point may be to broaden the definition of political activities and expenditure in the Companies Act 2006.”

The corporate world continues its vitriolic but insubstantial attacks on the Labour Party leader whose approach threatens their unreasonably affluent lifestyles. Will increasingly media-sceptical people who seek the common good be affected by them?

In brief, the reference is to arms traders, big pharma, construction giants, energy companies owned by foreign governments, food speculators, the private ill-health industry and a range of polluting interests. Examples of the damaging political-corporate nexus are given here – a few of many recorded on our database:

Arms trade: Steve Beauchampé – “A peacenik may lay down with some unsavoury characters. Better that than selling them weapons”.

The media highlights Corbyn’s handshakes and meetings, but not recent British governments’ collusion in repressive activities, issuing permits to supply weapons to dictators. In the 80s, when lobbying Conservative MP John Taylor about such arms exports, he said to the writer, word for word: “If we don’t do it, someone else will”. Meaning if we don’t help other countries to attack their citizens, others will. How low can we sink!

Most construction entries related to the PFI debacle, but in 2009 it was reportedthat more than 100 construction companies – including Balfour Beatty, Kier Group and Carillion – had been involved in a price-fixing conspiracy and had to compensate local authority victims who had been excluded from billions of pounds of public works contracts. The Office of Fair Trading imposed £130m of fines on 103 companies. Price-fixing that had left the public and councils to “pick up the tab”.

Utilities

In Utility Week News, barrister Roger Barnard, former head of regulatory law at EDF Energy, wondered whether any government is able to safeguard the nation’s energy security interests against the potential for political intervention under a commercial guise, whether by Gazprom, OPEC, or a sovereign wealth fund. He added: “Despite what the regulators say, ownership matters”. The Office of Fair Trading was closed before it could update its little publicised 2010 report which recorded that 40% of infrastructure assets in the energy, water, transport, and communication sectors were already owned by foreign investors.

Food

A Lancashire farmer believes that supermarkets – powerful lobbyists and valued party funders – are driving out production of staple British food supplies and compromising our food security. She sees big business seeking to make a fortune from feeding the wealthy in distant foreign countries where the poor and the environment are both exploited. These ‘greedy giants’ are exploiting the poor across the world and putting at risk the livelihoods of hard working British farmers, their families and their communities. She adds that large businesses are gradually asset-stripping everything of value from our communities to make profits which are then invested abroad in places like China and Thailand.

Health-related

Government resistance to funding long-term out of work illness/disability benefits followed the publication of a monograph by the authors funded by America’s ‘corporate giant’ Unum Provident Insurance which influenced the policy of successive governments. After various freedom of information requests, the DWP published the mortality figures of the claimants who had died in 11 months in 2011 whilst claiming Employment and Support Allowance, with 10,600 people dying in total and 1300 people dying after being removed from the guaranteed monthly benefit, placed into the work related activity group regardless of diagnosis, forced to prepare for work and then died trying. Following the public outrage once the figures were published, the DWP have consistently refused to publish updated death totals. Information touched on in this 2015 articlehas been incorporated into a ResearchGate report identifying the influence of Unum Provident over successive UK governments since 1992, the influence of a former government Chief Medical Officer and the use of the Work Capability Assessments conducted by the private sector – described as state crime by proxy, justified as welfare reform.

Air pollution

The powerful transport lobby prevents or delays action to address air pollutants such as ground-level ozone and particulates emitted by cars, lorries and rail engines which contribute directly to global warming, linked to climate change. They emit some common air pollutants that have serious effects on human health and the environment. Children in areas exposed to air pollutants commonly suffer from pneumonia and asthma.

A recent whistleblower reportrecords that Dr Raj Mattu is one of very few to be vindicated and compensated after years of suffering. The government does not implement its own allegedly strengthenedwhistleblower legislation to protect those who make ‘disclosures in the public interest’.

This media article relates to the mis-reporting of the Obama-Corbyn meeting: there are 57 others on this site.

Rewards for failure cover individual cases, most recently Lin Homer, and corporate instances: Serco and G4S were bidding for a MoD £400m 10-year deal, though they had been referred to the Serious Fraud Office for overcharging the government on electronic monitoring contracts. Another contender, Capita, according to a leaked report by research company Gartnerwas two years behind schedule with its MoD online recruitment computer system – yet the government had contracted to pay the company £1bn over 10 years to hire 9,000 soldiers a year for the army.

The 74th instance of the revolving door related to Andrew Lansley’s move from his position as government health minister to the private health sector. An investigation by the Mail found that one in three civil servants who took up lucrative private sector jobs was working in the Ministry of Defence: Last year 394 civil servants applied to sell their skills to the highest bidder – and 130 were MoD personnel. Paul Gosling describes how the Big Four accountancy firms have PFI ‘under their thumbs’ and gives a detailed list of those passing from government to the accountancy industry and vice versa.

Steve Beauchampé asks if the barrage of criticism apparently aimed at Jeremy Corbyn is more about undermining the politics he stands for which are probably less far to the left than those of many in the current government are to the right. Most political commentators and opponents aren’t worried that Labour will win a General Election under him, but they are alarmed that the movement his leadership has created might one day lead to an electable left winger.

An article by Mary Robinson, a former president of Ireland, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and a member of The Elders, may be read ona sister site.Sheopened:

Millions across the world feel that the current globalised system is not working in their best interests. From unemployed former steel workers in the US rust belt, to the small island states in the South Pacific where livelihoods are threatened by climate change, people are angry that decisions taken by governments and in corporate boardrooms appear blithely indifferent to their daily struggles. We know from history that crude populism offers no real solutions, creating only false hope and scapegoats. Yet it is also clear that there are many politicians who will cynically exploit genuine grievances for their own ends”.

She ended by calling on citizens across the globe to trust their best instincts and work together for justice, but thoughtful commentators pinpointed omissions which underlie the uneasy reaction of some readers (extracts follow, all links added).

John Bruce addresses Ms Robinson: “With immense respect the air in your ivory tower isn’t what the rest of us breathe”

This article epitomises the views of a human being with a great heart but so out of touch as not to begin to understand the realities of life as understood by those who voted Brexit, or for Trump, or who are, and will be, powering the whole ground swell of global discontent.

It is not about leadership per se, but its abuse in pursuing greed over decency and values

Simon elaborates: This tip of the hat to the discontent of the “Millions across the world” seems well intentioned. But Robinson fails to embrace the significant corruption and self-dealing that has characterized the “elite global agenda”.

Yes, in theory globalization offers much promise, but its idealistic promoters have inexcusably turned a blind eye to abuses, distortions and fraud in globalization’s execution. All too frequently, dissent has been brushed aside as populist ignorance.

Globalization’s idealistic leaders (The Elders?) have lost credibility precisely because they have failed to call out the “fellow traveler” profiteers in their own ranks, and likewise been cheerleaders to globalization’s stark imbalances.

John Bruce continues: One price of this has been consumerist capitalism – a policy to enrich the wealthy at the expense of the not so well.

The mechanism has been education to a belief that “I shop therefore I am” – all on the back of expensive debt to the individual, supplied at near zero cost by institutions which, in a free market, would no longer be in it.

That is the cause of disaffection and it threatens revolution. Corbyn is right 20/1 is a pay ratio the civilised world needs to adopt or, had we still been here, the future would have been a time of immense violence – politics by other means to get rid of the oppressive mortmain on the lives and aspirations of the many by the protected and privileged few. An elite whose leadership has long been to protect the status quo and vested interest. Not something anyone with the power to do anything wishes to change.

The deep entrenchment of such leadership, based on the comfortable misconception of its beneficiaries, that the answer to poverty is simply to make the rich richer and it will simply trickle down, has come to put humanity at risk never before faced.

The second price to be paid for consumerist capitalism is its carbon footprint

Nature has the capacity to re-cycle 280 – 300 ppm carbon pa (note Keeling). The system has been out of control since about 1980. Now, 40 years later and in absence of intervention – to make clean energy to put coal oil and gas out of business and convert current engines to run clean – we have no future.

It is, on the evidence, that stark. But just as the conventional wisdom was wrong in thinking the RMS Titanic couldn’t sink so today we no less deliberately deny ourselves the reality, preferring a delusion which allows us to think that by cutting carbon we can remain below 1.5C.

Strange. The nearest to British reportage came from the Guardian who merely opened: “Donald Trump is poised to eliminate all climate change research conducted by Nasa as part of a crackdown on “politicized science”, his senior adviser on issues relating to the space agency has said”.

As Donald Trump was sworn into office as the new president of the US on Jan. 20, a group of around 60 programmers and scientists were gathered in the Department of Information Studies building at the University of California-Los Angeles,harvesting government data.

Quartz continues:

“A spreadsheet detailed their targets: Webpages dedicated to the Department of Energy’s solar power initiative, Energy Information Administration data sets that compared fossil fuels to renewable energy sources, and fuel cell research from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, to name a few out of hundreds.

“Many of the programmers who showed up at UCLA for the event had day jobs as IT consultants or data managers at startups; others were undergrad computer science majors. The scientists in attendance, including ecologists, lab managers, and oceanographers, came from universities all over Southern California. A motley crew of data enthusiasts who assemble for projects like this is becoming something of a trend at universities across the country: Volunteer “data rescue” events in Toronto, Philadelphia, Chicago, Indianapolis, and Michigan over the last few weeks have managed to scrape hundreds of thousands of pages off of EPA.gov, NASA.gov, DOE.gov, and whitehouse.gov, uploading them to the Internet Archive. Another is planned for early February at New York University.

“Hackers, librarians, scientists, and archivists had been working around the clock, at these events and in the days between, to download as much federal climate and environment data off government websites as possible before Trump took office. But suddenly, at exactly noon on Friday as Trump was sworn in, and just as the UCLA event kicked off, some of their fears began to come true: The climate change-related pages on whitehouse.gov disappeared. It’s typical of incoming administrations to take down some of their predecessor’s pages, but scrubbing all mentions of climate change is a clear indication of the Trump administration’s position on climate science . . .

“Over the first 100 days of the new administration, a volunteer team of programmers will be scanning government websites and comparing them to the archived, pre-Trump versions, to check for changes. to produce a weekly report on changes . . . “

It is feared that large government data sets related to climate change and environmental health that scientists use for research will be lost next – for example, the Environmental Protection Agency database of air quality monitoring data might become a target of Trump-appointed EPA administrator Scott Pruitt’s office, based on Pruitt’s history of suing the EPA to roll back air pollution regulations.

Read moreabout the agencies involved in rescue and storage – one being Page Freezer which has three data centers, one in the US, one in Europe, and one in Canada – which will put the information out of reach of the US government.

Over the years former defence chiefs have said that to “abandon” Britain’s four Trident submarines would be “an enormous gamble” which could threaten “the survival of our nation” and another set of retired military men, similarly qualified, have said that these systems are ‘completely useless’. These are still readily to be found online, so why is the link to this recent letter so hard to find? There appears to be nothing sensitive or unexpected in it.

Is it a response to Private Eye’s recent exposure of the financial vested interests of many of the signatories?

The magazine lists the affiliations of some of the signatories (below), though probably for legal reasons it does not name the individuals concerned:

Lockheed Martin

Babcock defence group,

Sandia

EADS

Scowcroft Group

The magazine surmises that the Trident vote was a measure taken to reassure defence contractors, British and American that their investments would be safe and deals made would be honoured.

It commented that US companies stand to ‘make a mint’ out of the Trident Successor programme and that the British government is in no position to disappoint them.

A reader sendsthis link forthe latest news of the islanders’ claim to be allowed to return to their homes.

Over forty years ago the Chagos islanders were removed to make way for a military base by the United States in 1971 (above). Under a secret deal with the British government, the US agreed to contribute to the costs of establishing a base on one of the islands, Diego Garcia and to provide support for the UK’s nuclear missile programme.

The government won an appeal in the House of Lords, which ruled, in 2008, that the exiles could not return. Lawyers acting for the islanders claim that the law lords’decision relied heavily on a flawed 2002 feasibility study into resettlement. Read more here.

We learn that the supreme court will deliver a decision on Wednesday as to whether an earlier ruling by the House of Lords banning the Chagossians from living in their homeland was legal. If the decision is overturned it will pave the way for their return.

Will the British decision at last be consistent with natural law and public opinion or will the political-military alliance once again sideline morality with impunity?